1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electrosurgical apparatuses. In particular, the present invention relates to a counter and lockout device for use with an electrosurgical apparatus to indicate to the user the number of sterilization/use cycles the electrosurgical apparatus has undergone and impede use of the electrosurgical apparatus once a predetermined number of sterilization/use cycles have been conducted.
2. The Relevant Technology
Electrosurgical technology is an important tool in modem surgery due to the multi-functional abilities of electrosurgical instruments and apparatuses. Many electrosurgical instruments and apparatuses are reusable. Reusable electrosurgical instruments undergo sterilization following electrosurgery to ensure that the instruments are clean and sterile for subsequent surgeries. Sterilization procedures can be costly to perform and also result in wear on the reusable instruments and apparatuses. Heat is utilized in many sterilization procedures to kill the micro-organisms, bacteria, and other potential sources of infection that may be present on electrosurgical instruments subsequent to use. As with other forms of sterilization, the heat used in these procedures can be wearing on reusable electrosurgical instruments and apparatuses. As a result, reusable instruments and apparatuses must be designed to withstand the necessary sterilization procedures.
While disposable electrosurgical instruments and apparatuses may not be specifically designed to withstand numerous sterilization and use cycles, such instruments may nevertheless withstand a limited number of use and sterilization cycles before needing to be discarded. Due to this fact, some electrosurgical instruments have been accepted as reusable for a predetermined number of sterilization/use cycles. One difficulty related to these limited reuse instruments is that it can be difficult to monitor the number of sterilization/use cycles a particular tool or apparatus has undergone. As a result, an instrument or apparatus may be disposed of before the predetermined number of uses have been completed. It is also possible that, due to an oversight of a practitioner, an electrosurgical instrument or apparatus may be utilized for more than the recommended number of uses.
A variety of mechanisms and systems for monitoring the number of sterilization/use cycles an electrosurgical instrument or apparatus has undergone have been developed in an attempt to prevent under or over use of a limited reuse electrosurgical instrument or apparatus. One illustrative system for monitoring the number of sterilization/use cycles utilizes a temperature responsive member to increment or decrement a counter in response to a sterilization cycle. However, the manner in which sterilization cycles are conducted has rendered such temperature responsive mechanisms inaccurate or completely ineffective. This is due to the fact that sterilization procedures employ heating and cooling cycles in which multiple temperature peaks and valleys are experienced by the electrosurgical instrument during a single sterilization procedure. This can lead to multiple actuations of the temperature responsive element during a single sterilization procedure. As a result, the counter may increment/decrement multiple times in a single sterilization cycle resulting in an inaccurate representation of the number of sterilization/use cycles that the electrosurgical apparatus has actually undergone. An additional complicating factor is that a variety of types and configurations of sterilization procedures utilize widely variable cycle lengths making it difficult to design a sterilization responsive mechanism that is actuated a single time for each sterilization procedure.